Question Time 24th April 2024
The Panel:
Chris Philp (Conservative)
Wes Streeting (Labour)
Munira Wilson (LibDem)
Victor Adebowale (NHS Confederation)
Charles Moore (Columnist)
Venue: Tottenham
Wesley Paul William Streeting appears on QT and other broadcast media too often. A previous appearance on Question Time was as recently as February. Presently the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Streeting has been Labour MP for enriched Ilford North since 2015. Ironically, his majority of 5,200 may be eaten into at the next general election by George Galloway’s enriched Workers Party.
Forty-one-year-old Streeting is a graduate (History) of Selwyn College, Cambridge. After two terms as president of the National Union of Students, Streeting entered NGO land via the likes of the Helena Kennedy Foundation and vile Stonewall. A fuller QT Review biography is available here.
Wes’s partner is Joseph Dancey, a self-employed communications and public affairs adviser. An Oxford PPE graduate, after finishing his education Joseph joined the advocacy quangoland via the Low Pay Commission and the Labour Party.
A one-time political advisor to Peter Mandelson, Joseph is the founder and director of Endeavour Advisory Ltd – an endeavour that will no doubt benefit from having a partner who is Minister for Health.
As a future Labour Party Minister of Health and with responsibility for a £300 billion budget, Mr Streeting is attracting donations. According to Scotland’s National newspaper, Streeting has recently accepted £175,000 from donors with links to private healthcare.
Grammar school boy Chris Philp hails from South London and is an Oxford University graduate with a First in Physics. After completing his education, Mr Philp pursued a career in management consultancy before being elected as the Conservative member for Croydon South in 2015. As ever, the dullard of the family enters the House of Commons. Chris’s father, Brian Philp, also a grammar school boy, is a former UKIP candidate and an Honorary Doctor of Letters (Archaeology) from the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Munira Wilson, nee Hassam, is the daughter of Zanzibar fruit pickers. Her father came to England to study, her mother fled here during a revolution. You may scoff, but if her parents had been of the jellied eels and Pearly Kings and Queens type of Londoner, Munira wouldn’t have been a prize winner in the 2022 Ethnicity Awards.
While picking up her Public Service winner’s gong she shared the stage with, and Puffins of a sensitive constitution might want to look away now, Alison Hammond (Presenter of the Year), The Muslim Council of Britain (Outstanding Contribution to Communities), Chemical Mo Farah (Sports Trailblazer) and former Black & White Misterals Show comedian Lenny Henry (Lifetime Achievement – of spending a lifetime being Lenny Henry).
A grammar school girl and graduate of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, (Modern Languages) Munira followed a brief career in financial services as a tax advisor with Ernst and Young, before de-camping to ‘public affairs’ for the likes of Save the Children, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the LibDems. Miss Munira has been MP for Twickenham, Vince Cable’s old seat, since 2019.
According to this reviewer’s calculations, Murina is only the third elected Liberal MP of colour since the party was founded in 1859. None have been African. There have been others who have defected to the LibDems, but each was thrown out by LibDem voters at the first opportunity. Hm.
In a similar vein, Liberal Prime Minister Gladstone’s maiden speech to the House of Commons was a stout defence of slavery, the Gladstones being one of the biggest slavers in the British Empire. Hmm. The last Liberal prime minister, Lloyd George, visited Germany between the wars and was impressed when meeting Hilter. Writing in the Daily Express he noted,
“One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart.”
Hmmm. Likely to be passed over by the Ethnicity Awards.
Properly addressed as Doctor the Lord Victor Olufemi Adebowale MA, Baron Adebowale of Thornes in the County of West Yorkshire, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Dr Lord Victor might better be titled ‘King of the Quangos’.
During his last QT appearance in March 2021, QT Review HQ was forced to add a 200-word addendum in an effort to list some of his quangos, patronages, task forces, board appointments and honorary positions. From the Black and Minority Ethnic Mental Health National Steering Group to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to a non-executive director at the Nuffield Health Group.
Amongst his appointments since then is group membership of the Welsh government’s ‘Accountability Ministerial Task and Finish Advisory Group.’ Oh.
One of the West Riding Adebowales, his parents worked in the NHS, Victor is a former pupil of Wakefield Technical College and North East London Polytechnic. After his education, his Lordship worked in the local authority sector, specialising in housing. From there, to housing associations and housing quangos, en route rising to be chief executive of homeless charity Centrepoint.
Lady Adebowale is the interesting Tracey Gail Adebowale-Jones, an Equal Opportunities graduate of Wolverhampton University.
Charles Moore, not his real name, Charles Hilary Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham, has been on Question Time 18 times, but not recently. His first appearance was as long ago as 1987 when fellow panellists were Tory Party big beast Michael Heseltine, LibDem Simon Hughes and USDAW trades unionist Diana Jeuda.
His most recent appearance was five years ago, alongside Mairead McGuiness (now an EU commissioner), a Mr Jeremey Wright who, apparently, is still a Tory MP, and Puffin’s favourites David Lammy and Ash ‘the tash’ Sarker.
Not quite a man of the people, Hastings born Charles is an old Etonian and graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge (English and History). Upon completing his education, Lord Charles joined the Daily Telegraph and has remained a London media type since.
A hereditary journalist, Charles’s father was Richard Gillachrist Moore of the News Chronicle, a speechwriter for the Liberal Party. Grandfather was Sir Alan Hilary Moore, 2nd Barnoet, a writer, surgeon, old Etonian and graduate of Trinity. Great grandfather was Sir Norman Moore, 1st Baronet, another writer and surgeon.
Great great grandfather was Robert Ross Rowan Moore an Irish political economist, also a Trinity graduate but of Dublin’s Trinity College. His father was a lieutenant in the 104th Foot.
All well and good, but unlikely to win Charles an ethnicity award.
***
Question one, does Britain have a sick note culture and a lazy workforce? The questioner thought not and mentioned the unsympathetic attitude of our billionaire prime minister.
There’s another 850,000 on the sick since Covid, pointed out Chris Philp. We should help them back to work. The government are going to train administrators to make a better job of issuing sick notes than a doctor can.
We have a sickness problem and a lazy government, quipped cheesy Wes to cheesy applause. Waiting lists are the problem not sick notes. He promised millions more doctor’s appointments, scanners and mental health hubs.
He referenced the poor, huddled in their hovels worried about being evicted – unlike rich Wes. Where’s the money coming from? Asked La Bruce. Tax avoidance. Labour would go after people who don’t pay their taxes. Starting with their deputy leader?
A lifestyle coach spoke from the audience. Her client could stand, but only for four minutes and had been passed fit for work. How are people to be assessed? Philp conjured specialists out of thin air.
‘No,’ was the answer to the question according to Lord Victor, who added that he was getting on a bit. He groans when elections arrive, as governments get tired and have a go at someone to motivate their base. He’d never met anyone who didn’t want to work, but some people need help and will move on to different types of jobs than they’re used to.
At any one time, 41% of NHS staff are unwell, according to Victor. He wanted necks to be wound in, in order to understand how people actually live and how they can be actually helped.
Charles noted Victor had missed something. You don’t help the mentally unhealthy by keeping them off work. That makes the mentally unwell worse. Sick people should keep on going to work to aid their mental health. Too many people have been diagnosed with ADHD, it’s not a believable statistic. Victor sighed.
Regarding our occasional feature on railway stations pictured among the local photos on the front of the Question Time desk, this week’s railway station actually was a railway station, South Tottenham. Not quite Milano Centrale, Gare d’Austerlitz or my own humble Debatable Lands halt, it looked like this, except before it was improved.
Oddly, although the leftie audience and panel were outraged at the idea of British people being lazy and sick, let’s not pretend that another time they will not lay those cards to try to justify, mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration.
Munira answered ‘no’ as well. People are working at more than one job. And have to choose between eating and heating, because of Net Zero, the silly mare forgot to add.
Munira conjured thousands of new GPs from thin air and mental health MoTs. Social care is broken. Money will appear from nowhere to pay social care workers more.
Question two was about Rwanda. Wes thought the new law wouldn’t work and was too expensive. Rwanda isn’t a safe place. People who come here ‘seeking refuge’ aren’t allowed to work. The ‘refugees’ have fled war, torture and misery. In France?
Speaking of unsafe places, Wes Streeting needed two security guards to escort him into tonight’s venue on account of a small but vocal crowd hurling abuse at him regarding the situation in Palestine.
Equally interestingly the venue was the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, named after the former MP for Tottenham who was a council leader during the 1985 Tottenham riots in which policeman PC Keith Blakelock was murdered.
Grant is quoted by some sources as saying of the tragedy, “The police were to blame for what happened on Sunday night and what they got was a bloody good hiding.”
Chris Philp spoke well in defence of the Rwanda policy but nobody took any notice of him. Rather, they laughed.
A gentleman from the Congo spoke. Philp didn’t appear to know where the Congo was. Charles knew where Rwanda was, he’d been there and reassured the audience it wasn’t a ‘primitive African country.’ Good of him.
He mentioned the rights of people here. It isn’t right for large numbers of illegal immigrants to come to this country. Likewise, legal immigration is too high. It’s also not right for the Lords and judges to contradict elected MPs.
Munira referenced the death of a child in the Channel this week and mentioned her own two young children. The camera panned across the audience, almost all tinged. She claimed the cost of the Rwanda policy could have been better spent on healthcare. But didn’t mention it’s taken so long and cost so much because of the opposition of politicians, lawyers and judges.
Victor mocked Charles’s trip to Rwanda. Decent hotel. Gin and tonic at 5 o’clock. But Victor wouldn’t go there and he was going to tell us why. Because his gay friends couldn’t come and visit him.
And on that note, it was time for this reviewer to make a safe passage to his bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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